


Silence like trenches

by reefofhappiness



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Bureaucracy, Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reefofhappiness/pseuds/reefofhappiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://yj-anon-meme.livejournal.com/5067.html?thread=12692427#t12692427">this prompt</a>: Kaldur angst.  Writer's discretion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence like trenches

**Author's Note:**

> Check the end notes if you have triggers. I've written out the warnings there, since I feel they contain a certain spoiling quality.
> 
> Anyway, I used a new, experimental style -- which might be a warning in and of itself.
> 
> ETA: in case you didn't know, you can click on the hyperlink in the "(See the end of the work for more notes.)" that's here at the end of these author notes to skip directly down to the end notes without having to scroll through the whole story, in order to avoid seeing said triggering content without meaning to.

He does not tell anyone. His King knows (and so the Queen and so Tula and Garth – _they know they know_ ) and that is it.

(but perhaps he has told Batman, Batman always demands to know everything, and that means Robin knows, and though Robin is able to keep secrets if any of his teammates know then they know he is unfit to lead and)

He tells himself: he will be fine. He must be bigger than himself, he must not let any one thing steal him away from himself. Know thyself, he tells himself (and do not think of what that really means, that he is to remember how small and insignificant he is) because he must remember who he is. He must take this as experience, as lessons learned, as something he will move on on on and away from…

Know thyself, he tells himself and he flinches away from his King’s touch and γνῶθι σεαυτόν he repeats silently.

His eyes are wide open and his soul feels so weak and his magic is gone, he has lost his connection to it. He feels like he has lost his connection to the Ocean herself.

His eyes are wide open (even when they are closed) and he sees it all. Again and again and he wants to be at peace but it is nowhere in sight, it does not keep such broken company. It does not grace him with its presence.

He wishes to go home, to see his mother, but they cannot tell her the things that have been done, the wrongs that have transgressed against him. Not when one of Royal blood has dirtied himself so, has stooped so low. Prince Orm is not yet publically a villain, and there are no connections to larger and more dangerous plots. Until appropriately malicious deeds are tied to his name, ones that merit disinheritance and disowning, this is a thing he cannot be blamed for. This shame upon the Royal Family…no.

No, Kaldur’ahm cannot allow those rumors to spread, and of the same father would not a brother feel the same urges and yearnings? If Prince Orm has helped himself to such things, would not the King as well, first and foremost?

So he does not open his mouth for any thing. Tula brings his meals, Garth brings his meals, the King brings his meals when he is not off ruling or saving the world. The Queen wishes to bring his meals, but she is on bedrest and under the protection of secretly assigned guards (as if the Prince would do this wretched thing to her, that would be assault on the Royal Family, the Royal Consort and Royal Heir, that would be cause for death). And he does not open his mouth. He opens his heart and invites the Ocean back in, but she rejects him.

Just like peace she rejects him, and his fingers are long and brittle as he tries to hold on. Tries to ask back his magic and his strength and his mantra (know thyself, know thyself). They are long and brittle and he sees, eyes so wide open to make up for his mouth so tightly shut, he sees.

( – those fingers clenched and fists instead of hands pushing away but no, this magic and trickery has led to bondage he cannot break, to treacheries he cannot overcome – )

Their medicines and magicians are not sure how to treat such a thing, how to fix his silence and his waning without making him forget. And they cannot make him forget the Prince – it is… Not necessarily sacrilegious, but very wrong. And very frowned upon.

And very inescapable, Garth insists. And very impossible, Tula insists. Magic does not eliminate existences so cleanly. Constant reminders, constant peppering of clues, they bring back memories messily, incomplete, shadows of nightmares that warp into things worse than clear remembrance. And the Prince is of Royal blood, there are reminders of him everywhere.

There is a day that the Prince brings him his meal. The Prince who still sits at the Royal table for meals and attends political meetings with the King and holds charge over certain troops of the military. Kaldur’ahm focuses on that version of the Prince, because the one who pressed him to the Ocean floor with suffocating magic does not exist.

The Prince says nothing and he does not look, and he does not eat, and he does not hear the sounds of his soul squeezing itself thin and frail to the back of his rib cage trying to hide. Because he can do this, this this this thing. This, this, this thing that asks so much of him. His team needs him, he needs to be able to go back to the Surface and lead them.

Garth and Tula rush into the room when it is over, and they want to lay hands and kisses all over him, they want to heal him. He does not know how to tell them they cannot.

The King whispers to the Queen and these whispers reach him, hushed conversations that no one must hear: perhaps the Surface has medicines for these things. Perhaps he must go there to get better. These words are not approved by most, these words admit superiority to the Surface.

And it is one thing to go to the Surface to improve it, to impart it with gifts and knowledge from the Ocean. It is another to flee there for recovery. The Ocean makes you strong, the Ocean heals you (but he can no longer hear the Ocean, she is pressing at him from all sides and he sees again over and over and again and again, suffocating) and the Surface does not. It is dry and it takes.

But they are worried. He is wasting into nothing, and the Prince has new interest in him. No one knows the Prince will not take again from him – he does not know why he trusts in that so heavily. But he does, and even so, it would not matter. But he trusts with his eyes open to all the evil in the world. So there is that.

They take him even higher than the Surface. They take him into Space. And only His King and Batman (and so Superman) know why. They force nutrients and sedatives in him with thread-like tubes in his arms, force one down his throat while he is out he is told after he awakens.

We are trying to keep you alive don’t let this kill you, Batman scolds. It is the most caring tone he can afford. Your brother _____ your protégé and you let him get away with it Batman hisses at his King when he thinks Kaldur’ahm is asleep but Batman does not understand their ways and the politics and the necessities of it all. He does not hear and understand – or perhaps he refuses to – the word Batman flings so callously, the word Batman assigns to what has happened.

I will get you justice his King promises and he does not hear this either. He cannot hear the Ocean or his magic or his strength and he wants to go home and sleep in his bed and feel as he did before, young and safe and at ease in the waters. It is killing him to be there and it is killing him to be here. He thinks of commitment and it makes him shudder.

They want him to talk, so Black Canary is told and she tries to hold sessions. He will not speak for her, he pulls the thread tubes out his arms when the bright lights of the medical bay are off and lays in the silent darkness without a word. His words have dried up in the recycled manufactured air (they dried up deep in the Ocean’s depths). He would be angry at himself, if he were that same person, he realizes. It is a foreign and lonely and alone thought and he wants Tula’s and Garth’s old reassurance that he is still him. But he cannot ask and they cannot come if he could. He is afraid such reassurances would not come, not anymore.

What is going on in your head, Black Canary asks. You are so strong you can do this you just need help, let us help.

But he cannot.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: PTSD/clinical depression, bureaucratic escape of justice/punishment, indirect past references to rape, and possible improper use of Greek


End file.
